Alexandra Heller remembers the artwork of her late husband, Peter, that is stored in nearly every room of her Morristown home. / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

Alexandra Heller walks by the artwork of her late husband, Peter, that is stored in nearly every room of her Morristown home. / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

Alexandra Heller (right) and her son, Stephen, with a painting by her husband and his father Peter Heller, which hangs in the sanctuary of Christ Church, Presbyterian in Burlington earlier this month. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Members of Christ Church, Presbyterian have been looking at a painting for 35 years without knowing much, if anything, about it.

As the church prepares to leave the building this week at the end of its lease, and the University of Vermont prepares to take over the space, the fate of the painting — a large abstract work by Peter Heller that fills much of one side of the chapel — hangs in the balance.

“Mr. Heller died several years ago and we know little about his painting,” Christ Church, Presbyterian member Elinore Standard wrote in an email. “UVM is reclaiming the Christ Church building at the end of December and we are concerned about what will become of the large work.”

The university has yet to announce plans for the building; UVM spokesman Enrique Corredera said in a statement this month that the music department would continue to use the space for classes until plans are settled.

Whatever its future, the painting has a storied past that straddles the Atlantic, with roots in the painter’s childhood in Europe during World War II and connections to the University of Vermont and to Johnson State College.

At the invitation of the Burlington Free Press, Heller’s wife, Alexandra Heller, 81, of Morristown, viewed the painting this month for the first time in 50 years and shared some of the story of her husband’s remarkable life. He died in 2002 at 73 years old.

The artwork is the largest painting she believes her husband made — and one of the darkest.

“I remember it took him the whole summer to paint it, and every time I would go out and look at it, it would be different,” Alexandra Heller said, standing in the Christ Church sanctuary beneath the painting.

Working on that painting likely was difficult, because he was just coming into his style, she said.

“It was, for me, full of darkness, and that probably comes out of the war, and he must have been trying to work that out in that painting,” Alexandra Heller said. “I think he was transitioning from the past to the present – his childhood experiences and his then-present experiences.”

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Beyond that, however, Alexandra Heller and her son, Stephen, who also came to see the work, hesitated to interpret the art piece.

“He hated explaining paintings,” she said.

Heller never even titled his work.

Beginnings

Peter Heller was born in Berlin in 1929, the only child of Hans and Ingrid Heller. His father was Jewish, a musician and a composer, and his mother was a pianist.

The family fled to Paris when their son was 2 years old, Alexandra Heller said, and when the Nazis came to Paris, the family fled again, to a village in the south of France.

At one point, Hans Heller was taken to an internment camp in France, and Peter Heller and his mother lived in a goat hut until the end of the war.

“The French concentration camp was investigated by the Nazis, and they wanted the names of all the people, because they wanted to, of course, extract all the Jews,” she said. When they saw the name “Heller,” they mistakenly assumed that Heller was a Greek name, as the story goes. “So he was not snatched.”

The family had tickets to immigrate to the United States on Dec. 7, 1941 — the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“All tickets were canceled,” Heller said.

The family finally did make it to the United States to live with an uncle in New York City, and they arrived with a recommendation from a famous distant cousin:

Albert Einstein.

The Hellers kept the letter the preeminent scientist sent endorsing their passage to the United States. Alexandra Heller has the note at her Morristown home.

“I am taking the liberty to recommend warmly to the American immigration authorities the visa-application of Mr. Hans Heller who is a distant relative of mine,” Einstein wrote in the letter, which was addressed “to whom it may concern” and dated Jan. 16, 1946, in Princeton, N.J.

“I vouch for his and his wife’s personal and political reliability,” Einstein continued, “and I am convinced that he and his family fully deserve to be admitted to the United States after all these years of suffering and privation.”

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Alexandra Heller said she’s never had an expert take a look at the letter to authenticate it; she sees no need.

Upon arrival, the Hellers lived in New York City with their relative Richard Goetz, an artist and art collector who brought Peter Heller to galleries and sparked his artistic interest.

“Everything Peter knew about painting he learned from Richard Goetz,” Alexandra Heller said. “He used to walk up to the paintings with a magnifying glass and just show him what it meant to paint.”

Heller studied at an arts high school in New York City and then began pursuing an art degree at the Columbia School of Painting and Sculpture, where he and his future wife met on registration day.

“His hero at this time was Cezanne, so there was quite an influence there,” Alexandra Heller said, referring to her husband’s art in college, “and the more he painted, the more abstract he became.”

His later paintings, she said, illustrated an “inner landscape.”

Peter Heller met Einstein later, by happenstance, when Heller was living in Princeton for the purpose of learning English. Einstein served as a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1933-1955. Alexandra Heller said she doesn’t remember the details of her husband’s conversation with Einstein, but she does remember that Einstein asked him why he wanted to paint.

A career in Vermont

After graduating from the Columbia School of Painting and Sculpture in 1956, Heller worked various teaching jobs, including several years at the University of Vermont teaching French beginning in 1961 and a short time at Bard College in New York.

Finally he and Alexandra Heller found positions teaching art at Johnson State College in Vermont, where Peter Heller taught from the late 1960s until his retirement in 1984.

He had incredible energy for his work, the couple’s son, Stephen Heller, said, and continued to paint as much as he was able. Alexandra Heller has dozens of the paintings hung and stacked in the home where they raised two children together.

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Alexandra Heller owns the Brick House Book Shop in Morristown, a used bookstore open “by chance or appointment.” She’s also an artist herself, and the store is filled with her welded metal sculptures.

Peter Heller painted the 8-by-16-foot abstract piece that hangs in Christ Church, Presbyterian the summer after his son was born, when the family was house-sitting at a farm in the town of Arlington. He set up his studio in a barn on the property.

“You give a painter like Peter a huge barn, and he’s going to do a huge painting,” Alexandra Heller said.

Peter Heller finished the work in 1963 and gave it to a minister friend at St. Anselm’s Episcopal Chapel in Burlington, which later became the home of Christ Church, Presbyterian.

“That came with the building,” said Ed Granai, a member of the church for 43 years. Some church members over the years have interpreted the painting as a representation of the Trinity, especially the Holy Spirit, Granai said.

The pastor, the Rev. Michael Brown, said he was told the theme of the work is peace.

“There are a lot of people who have found it rather dark,” Brown said. “My interpretation is that there’s always a glimmer of hope for peace, even when it looks darkest.”

There’s no room for the painting in the congregation’s new meeting space at St. Paul’s Cathedral, so Brown said the artwork probably will remain at the University of Vermont in the absence of another home.

Full of life

Peter Engisch of Williston cherishes childhood memories of Peter Heller, who was a family friend. Heller had encouraged Engisch to pursue his love of music.

“He had a fantastic laugh, full of life, a true artist to the bone,” Engisch said.

Heller was passionate about music and always listened to classical works as he painted.

Years later, Engisch saw the painting for the first time when he began recording choral music in Christ Church. He instantly recognized the work as Heller’s — without even seeing the signature in the corner.

“It was like running into an old friend,” he said.

“It scares me a little bit; it moves me,” Engisch said. “I see a lot of emotions coming out, and my guess is it has to do with his past. ... Whatever I see in the painting, it also is a real comfort to me, because he was just an amazing guy.”

Alexandra Heller keeps her husband’s studio intact on the top floor of their house: paintbrushes and a board caked with dried paint, a stereo set, two self-portraits of Richard Goetz leaning against a wall and two large paintings sitting on easels. They were the last two paintings Heller made, and he finished the final work the night before he died.

She remembers looking at paintings and listening to classical music with her husbad just before his death.

“His last words were when the music had ended: ‘It’s so rich,’” she recalled. “And I said, ‘You mean the painting or the music?’ And he said, ‘Life.’”